Hey, I’m Aden Date
Unboring Teamwork Trainer
I help cross-disciplinary research teams collaborate for impact
Engaging training, coaching and advisory informed by cognitive science (not management fads)
I know you love credentials
Prevent Death By PowerPoint
Researchers need to be more adaptable, but our training approaches haven’t adapted to meet them. The research environment is curlier and hairier than ever, and we need to collaborate effectively to meet those challenges.
We can’t do this inside our comfort zone.
Cognitive science shows us that training can’t afford to be boring. Behaviour shifts when people are engaged, delighted, and challenged (yes, even introverts and sceptics).
It’s time to close our laptops, get off our butts, delete the PowerPoint and burn the Post-Its.
Break boredom and bring work to life (and life to work)
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Break boredom and bring work to life (and life to work) ◉
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Retain great minds
Remember how science felt as a kid (or an especially green early career researcher?). Rediscover the joy of team science, even when uncertainty is sky-high.
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Win more funding
Funding increasingly depends on institutions making an impact, and impact depends on research teams who know how to collaborate. Help your people make this shift.
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Strengthen research culture
Say goodbye to single player games. Replace ego and silo with initiative and collaboration, driving translational impact and researcher well-being.
"It's not easy to democratise the executive table, to encourage that vulnerability, due to the role scientific prowess plays — but somehow Aden did it. He has an intuition for what the room needs that you just can't bottle up. The impacts of the workshop carried through to dinner afterwards, our next executive meeting, and in the sentiment of the broader team."
Donna O’Hara, Chief Operating Officer, The Kids Research Institute Australia
Three ways we can work together
Experience
One-off workshops
Experience three years of culture change in a single day. Open the space to see what collaboration feels like and shift sticky behaviours with a full-day workshop.
Extend
Three-month program
Democratise by building leadership behaviours at the level of the whole team. Reduce escalation, caution, and permission seeking so your team can move quickly and joyfully.
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Nine-month program
Create the conditions that make collaboration fast, easy, and fun. We’ll work with a major cross-functional team issue (not abstract theory) and make a measurable impact together, guaranteed.
CASE STUDY
Expanding Comfort Zones at Curtin University
How Alan’s high-performing team adapted to an uncertain future
“This workshop really pushed some of them. It helped us understand how we knit together. We learned about how to deal with the unknown, because on the day, you threw us into the unknown and we dealt with it as a group.” - Alan
Dr. Alan McAlpine manages the Curtin Student Success team. He has smart, committed employes with a strong vision and clear direction… but he wasn’t seeing his team perform to the top of their intelligence.
Alan’s hard work helped build a more autonomous, capable and impactful team… all while having plenty of fun along the way.
SMART teams quiz
Are you making the most of your big brain team? Find out in five minutes.
“As a sceptic, I was blown away by Aden’s ability to create rapport, connection, and belly laughs from the group within minutes. His facilitation abilities are top-notch, and even more impressive once you realise the research-backed methods behind the fun.”
Shani Wende, L&D Specialist in research translation
+21%
Productivity boost from highly engaged employees
85%
of Australian employees are not engaged or actively disengaged at work
+20%
Financial performance in happier companies
In the news, mostly for good reasons.
